Amateurs (26 page)

“So . . .”

“So the new book would be released under both of our names. Your name would still come first.” Her voice wasn't as unwavering as in rehearsal.

“Sara—”

“That's alphabetical anyway.”

“You're serious?”

She nodded.

“An excerpt has already come out under my name in the fucking
New Yorker
!”

“I know! And that was
my
work. How do you think it feels to get that kind of recognition, the kind I've wanted since I was in high school, but not really get it?”

“You don't even respect the other writers on that list, so why should the recognition matter to you?”

“Of course I respect them!”

“No, it's all resentment and jealousy and competition with you, never respect or goodwill.”

“If any of that's true, it's because I don't get the credit I deserve,” she said with hard-won evenness. “Anyway, let's not get hung up on
the excerpt. Maybe that section was your work, but the book as a whole was jointly composed.”

He shook his head. “I don't think I should have to explain to you how impossible this is.”

“It's not impossible. It's a good publicity angle.”

He laughed. It was one of his gummy laughs that brought her back to when she found him unattractive.

“Just this one, Archer.” She was pleading now. “Take most of the credit. Say that when you were going through the pages after a two-month break, you realized that my contributions were more than editorial, that it was only right to acknowledge that, belatedly. It'll make you look magnanimous.”

“Sara.” There was, at least, some tenderness in his voice. If he gave in, he would also invite her to stay for dinner, and until Gemma or whoever arrived, they could be together less combatively.

“Just for this book,” she said. “I just want this one. I'm good at what I do.”

“Of course you are.”

“I want people to know it. Maybe that's shallow, but I want it. Just this one. The next will be all you, and I'll stick to your ideas and it'll be great, a great book.”

He seemed to be studying her face. “It's like”—he delayed for a moment; that glimmer of tenderness had passed—“it's like all of a sudden you don't grasp the nature of the deal. You're basically asking for a change from employment to patronage.”

“Not exactly.”

“I said
basically.
You understand, right, that you're making a lot more money than you could otherwise make writing?”

“Duh.”

“And frankly a lot more money than you could make at anything.”

She sniffed away tears. “You don't know that.”

With smiling asperity: “It's an educated guess.”

She stood up.

“You're not a genius, you know. You're smart. There's millions of smart people.”

“Fuck you.”

“You're leaving?” When she didn't answer, he said, “Are you leaving in an ‘I quit' way, or just leaving?” He hadn't even risen to his feet.

“I'm not quitting.”

A minute later she palmed open the door to the sidewalk as if she were in urgent need of air. She had sneakers on and decided to walk back to the hotel. She wasn't crying, but there were tears in her throat.
There's millions of smart people.
There
are
millions.

She won no concessions, though her next check reflected a generous raise. She returned to
The Second Stranger
's last round of revisions somewhat richer, but in a spirit of aggrieved recklessness.

June 2011

John looked back one more time at the rented sedan, walked slowly through the mudroom, and set the groceries on the kitchen counter. He stood still for a moment, listening to the sounds coming from the family room, keeping one hand poised inside a grocery bag so that if someone were to approach, he could quickly return to a reasonable action. His bowels roiled when he recognized Chick Crennel's distinctive quack. Chick lived in Redwood City, California, and hadn't been expected.

The planks of the dining room floor seemed wider and waxier than usual as John made his way to the family room. Chick stood up. He was wearing chinos and a red candy-stripe dress shirt of light broadcloth. His handshake would sooner be called abusive than firm, though John's hands were bigger. George was sitting on the sofa, crushing mint leaves into his drink and fiddling
with his hearing aid. Fuzzy Zoeller was being interviewed on the muted Golf Channel while a scratchy jazz record played softly on the stereo.

Looking out on the garden, John saw that Sara was getting up from one of the Tamiami chairs. “Oh, Sara's here too,” he said, which served as a greeting as she slid open the screen to the family room. “Hi, John,” she said. She made his name sound like an accusation. She was holding a paperback at her side, marking her place with her pointer finger. She sat down on the long sofa, not quite within reach of her grandfather.

“One of my old records,” Chick said, jutting his chin toward an LP jacket resting on the dining table. “Three eighty-nine at Hoke Brothers. They had preview booths where you could listen to anything in the store.”

“Nice. Who is it?”

“Toots Thielemans,” Chick said.

“The Belgian harmonicist and siffleur,” Sara inserted.

“You still making ten-speeds?” Chick asked. “I keep meaning to put my order in.”

“No, not hardly much,” John said. “I don't have the equipment.”

“I thought you were going into business with a guy from around here.”

“He moved,” John said, then asked about Chick's work.

“You didn't hear? I'm suddenly retired.”

“Oh. Is that bad?”

“It's a year or two early. But they gave me a decent severance.”

“So are you staying awhile?” John said.

Chick laughed. “I still have a place to live, if that's what you're getting at.”

“No, I just—I didn't know you were coming.”

Sara looked up. “You didn't?” She had been reading again, or pretending to, which either way seemed teenage.

More loudly than necessary, Chick said, “Dad, you didn't tell John we were coming?”

George shifted in his seat and looked out at the patio. “Yes, I told him.”

“He didn't,” John said. There was a brief nonverbal exchange between Sara and Chick.

“Maybe he should get started on din-dins,” George said.

“I only have two chicken breasts,” John said, “but they're good-sized.”

“No need for loaves-and-fishes theatrics,” Chick said. “We'll just order a pie. Does Al's still deliver?”

“Al's does
not
still deliver,” George said, “and I can't for the life of me fathom why.”

“They went out of business,” John said.

“Christ,” Chick said, as if Al's shuttering symbolized everything wrong with the world.

“There's another place,” John said. “I'll call.”

While John used the kitchen phone to order the pizzas, he heard George say, “I told him!” He returned to the family room with a bowl of almonds and George's celery juice. “It's supposed to help with his arthritis,” he told Chick.

Chick was pouring himself a bourbon at the bar. “Have a seat, John.”

George, ignoring the celery juice, shook the ice cubes in his original drink.

Chick sat down and folded his hands between his legs. “So I'm sensing my old man's left you in the dark here.”

“How so?” John said.

“Maybe I should leave,” Sara said.

“You can stay,” Chick said.

The seating in the family room was spread out. John and Chick sat about five feet from each other, both facing the garden but angled slightly toward one another like stereo speakers.

“Well, John, I found George an assisted-living facility,” Chick said.

“Oh.”

“A nice place over in Barrington.”

“That
is
news to me,” John said.

“On the phone he told me you had a new pad lined up and everything,” Chick said.

“He does,” George said. “Fully furnished, he says. Nattered on and on about it over dinner. His memory's worse than mine.”

“See, this is why he needs trained caretakers now,” Chick said.

“The doctor says he's doing very well for his age,” John said. “As for now, with all due respect, I think he's just, you know, lying. It's not a memory thing.”

“John,” Sara said, “you really don't know what you're talking about.”

“I understand he fell not long ago when you were at work,” Chick said.

“Yes,” John said.

“Why you didn't call me that night, I'll never understand.”

“I called Sara.”

“Sara's not your contact.”

“He wasn't badly hurt,” John said.

“Thank God!” Chick said. “Look, it's been great, what you've done, it's been great. You reached out to us at just the right time. I know Dad's liked having you around. But it's not safe for him to live here anymore.” Chick turned to George, notched up the volume: “It's not safe here, Dad.”

“There's no crime,” George said.

“There's crime,” Chick said. “Remember when you and Mom were robbed?”

“Burgled,” Sara said.

“Anyway, I wasn't talking about crime,” Chick said.

George waved dismissively.

“So what's the time frame?” John said. He watched his own feet tap the edge of a black-and-white rug whose strands reminded him of sea anemone tentacles.

“I've got a Dumpster coming tomorrow,” Chick said, “movers on Saturday.”

“Saturday?”

“For the movers. I'd like you out by Sunday. Sara's here to help organize the small stuff. It'd be great if you were free to help too. By now you probably know better than anyone where stuff is. I thought we could start tonight, put in a long day tomorrow.”

“You might've spoken directly to me 'stead of trying to send a message through Mr. Crennel.”

Chick held out his hands like a bank teller in crisis. “I realize that now. But he told me you two had discussed everything. He seemed very lucid that night on the phone.”

“I'm sure he was,” John said.

“Okay,” Chick said. “Let's not . . .”

“It's just, it's abrupt.” It was all the more humiliating to be expelled like this in front of Sara.

“You know what you should do?” Chick said.

The question dangled like legs on a ski lift.

“Take a vacation,” Chick resumed. “Take one on me. I've got miles coming out my rear end. Go to Jamaica, wherever—maybe not the Far East.”

“No, that's not needed.”

“I told you I got a nice severance from those assholes. Here's yours.”

“If it's a severance package, I'd rather get money.”

“I can't do cash.”

John adjusted his neck. “Could you book me a hotel room in Winnipeg?”

“Winnipeg? Why not Montreal or Toronto. Whistler's gorgeous this time of year.”

“I'm going to my best friend's wedding in Winnipeg. As of now I'm booked into a rattrap.”

“Well, why the rattrap, John? We pay you.”

“For now,” George put in.

John shrugged. He had figured that cheap lodging would leave him with more to spend on the chocolate package.

“It's Archer's wedding,” Sara said.

“Oh, of course,” Chick said. “Well, I can check for participating hotels in Winnipeg.”

John's thank-you barely sounded.

“But if I put you up at a Sheraton in Winnipeg, that's it. You can't come back to me a month later saying you want to go to Venice after all.”

John stared at Chick.

“Let's assemble some boxes before the food comes,” Sara said.

The next afternoon, John followed Sara up the dog-legged staircase that led from his room to the attic. Through some maneuvering on John's part, he and Sara had been assigned to work together on emptying the attic's contents. Chick's view was that everything still up there should be transferred directly to the trash—“It's a shame we can't fashion some kind of chute”—but Sara, who only a month earlier had been so uninterested in her grandmother's clothes, was now inclined to be more preservationist.

That meshed with John's aims. He pulled on the light. In some spots the dust was as thick as mouse fur. He pointed: “Maybe you could take the west side there, and I'll take the east.”

“I just don't want to throw things away indiscriminately,” she said.

He watched her clear cobwebs from the pie-chart top of a golf bag. He said, “So here we have a box of Christmas cards and an old kite.”

“An interesting old kite?” She went on inspecting boxes, didn't turn around to look.

He held the kite. “Bent. Not sure how flyable.”

“Interesting?”