The Up and Comer (10 page)

His voice had changed again. I was starting to peg it as somewhere between deeply earnest and menacing. Either way, I didn't much like it. Then again, odds were he was simply a troubled guy who needed an ear to bend. As I'm sure someone once had the presence of mind to point out, you never really want to disappoint a guy too much who's predisposed to killing himself.

"In that case, you name the time and the place and I'll be there," I said.

"The Oyster Bar, one o'clock," he answered quickly. "See you there."

Before I could say yes, no, or you know, the bluepoints and Wellfleets really aren't all that tasty this time of year, he hung up.

I leaned back in my chair and tried to sort this guy out. Tyler Mills and the concept of reality had always had what you might call an on-again, off-again relationship. Given his uneven demeanor over the phone, it seemed that the two were not necessarily on speaking terms these days.

We had first met years ago as sophomores at Deerfield. He was a nice enough kid, just really didn't know how to fit in. He'd always be making some comment or telling a story that came out of left field — check that, deep left field. In other words, Tyler was full of shit. Soon the mere sight of him on campus brought about a collective rolling of the eyes from everyone else. He must have caught on, though, because come junior year he had figured out a way to be tolerated, if not entirely accepted. Free pot. Let's just say if I had a nickel for every nickel bag he unloaded on us, I wouldn't need the Metcalf money.

Of course, being the school stoner wasn't exactly conducive to a stellar academic career. It was awfully time-consuming, especially when you consider having to keep track of all those bootleg Grateful Dead tapes in your dorm room. That Tyler had to blow off the occasional midterm was merely an occupational hazard. So while all of us moved on to our respective Ivy League schools, Tyler went off to the University of Colorado at Boulder. From there I basically lost track of him.

Until one Saturday night about four years back. Tracy and I were at a party somewhere uptown. We'd been dating for no more than a couple of months. A few drinks into the evening, I hear this whisper of a voice behind me.

"Anybody want to get stoned?"

I turned around to see Tyler staring back at me with a real Manson Family grin. He was wearing a down jacket and a wool hat. The fact that it was August at the time seemed to matter very little to him.

He still looked like a stoner, though now perhaps a professional one, if you know what I mean. He had caught up to me in height (six feet) and surpassed me in weight; not fat by any stretch, just a little plump. He had a scraggly Vandyke growing on his face and what little hair I could see sticking out from beneath his hat appeared to have been bleached blond from its natural black. I remember thinking at the time that he looked one plaid shirt short of being a poster boy for Seattle.

Anyway, to say I was surprised to see him was an understatement. As I was still in the "Must Impress Tracy" courtship phase of our relationship, I stood there dreading the idea of introducing him to her as a friend of mine. Sure enough, he did it for me. "Hi, I'm Tyler Mills; Philip and I were like this back at Deerfield." It would've been bad enough if he'd simply put his two fingers together side by side as he said
like this.
That he overlapped them in some pseudo-latent homosexual connotation was almost more than I could bear. Nonetheless, whatever thoughts Tracy may have been harboring on the inside, on the outside she didn't seem to mind. In fact, she seemed downright engaged by Tyler. The next thing I knew, the two were chatting it up like they were the old chums.

At some point he mentioned the novel he was writing. He was reluctant to share any details with us, except that we could think of it as a cross between
Madame Bovary
and
Fear and Loathing in Las
Vegas. Naturally. He claimed that he was nearly halfway done with his first draft and already had a couple of agents wanting to sign him.

And I was the pope, I remember thinking.

Later, when even Tracy began to steal glances at her watch, I announced to Tyler that she and I had to get up early the next morning. We exchanged phone numbers, gave lip service to the idea of getting together for dinner, and shook hands good-bye. From there, I basically lost track of him again.

Then a couple of years later, not long after Tracy and I were married, we were at another party, this one heavy with past Deerfielders, and the news broke that Tyler had tried to kill himself. A chorus of
Omigods!
ensued, along with claims from various would-be psychics that they had known something like this was going to happen. As for me, I felt a small measure of guilt. Perhaps if I'd made more of an attempt to be his friend over the years he wouldn't have been so screwed up. Where I got off thinking that my involvement could have made his life more worth living I didn't know.

I did know, however, that as I took the steps down to the lower level of Grand Central Station that afternoon to meet Tyler for lunch, I felt like I was doing a decent thing. My good deed for the day, if you will. No small accomplishment for a practicing attorney.

The Oyster Bar.

I've always thought the Oyster Bar to be a microcosm of New York City: bustling, loud, and expensive. You essentially have two choices when you walk in. To the right you can eat counter style, to the left is a cavernlike room with at least a hundred tables.*

Footnote* There is, in fact, a third choice: the "Saloon," located through a set of swinging shutter doors to the very far right. But with its wood paneling and cozy table layout, you might as well be eating at another restaurant.

Guessing left, I spotted Tyler at a table for two in the rear. He had the Mafia seat (back to the wall), and as I approached he stood and gave me a weak handshake. We sat down and studied each other for a moment.

"You look the same," he said, breaking the silence.

"You lost some weight," I said in return. Too much, actually. His face looked gaunt, and his clothes — a blue-striped Oxford and old chinos —
 
gave new meaning to the term "loose-fitting." He'd already been served a coffee, and given the way his fingers were tapping feverishly against the table, it was a good bet that it wasn't his first cup of the day.

"So how've you been?" Tyler asked.

"Pretty good. Yourself?" I replied.

"Pretty fucked up, at least that's what I was. You probably know all about that, or at least the juicy parts. I'm doing better, much better now, though. Things are finally interesting for me again."

"That's great," I said. "Hey, I've got to ask: Whatever happened to that novel you were working on?"

Tyler squinted. "The what?"

"You know, the novel you told Tracy and me about when we last saw you at that party years back."

"Oh, that?" he said, rubbing his temples. "I burned it."

"As in
burned it
burned it?" I asked.

"Yeah — poof! — up in smoke, just like that."

I thought maybe he was kidding at first; that was, until I stared into his eyes. He wasn't kidding. "You mind if I ask why?" I said.

"Not at all. It's simple, really; what happened was this: I was busting my hump, pouring everything I had into what I thought would be a great work of literature, right, when one night I had this horrifying vision, quite demoralizing, really, that after all the work, all the sweat and all the sacrifice, my book would simply wind up in
The New Yorker
under the heading 'Briefly Noted.'
Briefly Noted!
Can you imagine anything more trivializing? And that was if I was lucky. I mean, think of all those books that must end up under the heading Totally Ignored.' So like I said, I burned it, my manuscript, right in the garbage pail. But that's my point, really."

Already my ears were tired. Nonetheless, "Your point?" I asked.

"Yeah, why I got so fucked up," Tyler said. "That book thing was the final straw, the thing that pushed me over the edge. I became so convinced that I was a complete failure that the only option left for me, I thought, was to take my own life. Crazy, right? Except let me tell you, it didn't seem so crazy at the time. Of course, that's when the real irony kicked in. Turned out I was such a complete failure that I couldn't even succeed in killing myself! Go figure. Hey, where the fuck is that waitress?!"

I sat in amazement as Tyler, who'd been speedtalking at a
Guinness Book
clip, reached into his pocket and pulled out a half-crumpled pack of Marlboros.

"Smoke?" he offered me.

"No, thanks," I told him. As he lit the cigarette and took a long drag, my sense of humor couldn't help it. "You know, those things will kill you."

He smirked and proceeded to exhale in my face. Our waitress arrived and placed two menus on the table.

"There's no smoking in the restaurant, sir," she announced.

"Eat me," said Tyler without skipping a beat.

Unsure exactly how to handle that response, the woman picked up the menus and stormed off. I figured we had a good two, maybe three minutes before we got our asses kicked out of the place. At the very least, she was sure to spit in our oysters.

"Where was I?" asked Tyler.

"Failure to commit suicide," I informed him.

"Right, well, that's when the epiphany hit me — pow! — like, crystal clear. I realized that if I was going to be sentenced to life, as it were, I might as well try to make the most of it. You know, enjoy it and stuff."

At last, an encouraging sign; something coming out of his mouth that made sense.

Tyler continued: "So guess what I did first? On second thought, don't guess; I mean, you can guess, but you'd never be able to guess right, you know what I mean?"

"I think so," I replied. It didn't matter.

"The first thing I did was start to ride the commuter trains back and forth out of Grand Central here. Every day I would do this, and every day I would wait for the inevitable asshole who would take out his cell phone and start making calls. He'd call his office, he'd call his friends, and he'd be sitting there talking as if the entire train car was his fucking phone booth. It was as if he had total disregard for the people trying to read, trying to sleep; total disregard for me. And what would almost always happen is that at some point during these calls the asshole would give out his cell phone number so someone could call him back… and like every other part of his fucking conversation, I could hear every digit. So here's what I would do. I would write down the number; then, to make sure there was no connection made to me, I would wait a week. Then? Then I would go to town. I would call this asshole. I would call him and tell him I was watching him, that there was no escaping me. That it was only a matter of time before I would sneak up on him, when he would meet his ultimate demise.

"Sometimes, you know, a guy would call bullshit, and that's when I would refer to some physical feature of his, or maybe the tie he was wearing that morning on the train. This would spook them, spook them real good." Tyler stopped for a moment to gauge my reaction. "So now you're probably asking yourself why I was doing this, and I'll be the first to admit it's a fair question. The answer is this: it was my way of getting even with all these pompous assholes, that's what it was."

I finally spoke up. "Let me get this straight," I said. "Because they talked loudly, that you could overhear them on a train, that's why you had to get even with them?"

Tyler shook his head at me. "Philly, you're missing the whole point here. Anyway, after a while the novelty kind of wore off. It got old. The guys would all change their numbers, you know. Well, all of them except this one guy. I didn't know if he was stubborn or just plain stupid at first. Turns out what he really was was scared. I mean, really scared. Like at one point he demanded to know what I wanted from him. Was it money, he asked, because if that's what it was he could make an arrangement. Can you believe that?! He could make an
arrangement.
It dawned on me, this guy must have a guilty conscience or something, you know, to want to pay off someone so easily. Hell, someone who he didn't know, who simply had his cell phone number. Bonkers, I tell you. But it did give me an idea.

"You see, all of us to some degree are guilty, Philly, guilty of something. I got to wondering, what are my so-called friends guilty of? That's when I decided." Tyler stubbed out his cigarette on the table, flicked it onto the ground, and looked at me expressionless, trying to milk the moment. Moment passed, he leaned in and whispered, "That's when I decided to follow them."

Our waitress arrived again, this time with some official-looking guy wearing a suit.

"Excuse me, sir," said the suit to Tyler. "There's no smoking in the restaurant here."

"I should certainly hope not; I'm asthmatic," said Tyler.

The suit looked at the waitress.

"But he was smo—"

Tyler interrupted her. "You know, the two of you do seem like nice people and all, however, I'm trying to have a lunch here with my attorney." That last word there lingered in the air for a bit as the suit looked at me in my suit... a far better one, I might add.

"Never mind," the guy said, and the two of them walked away. A few minutes later a different waitress arrived and placed two menus on the table again.