Just Friends (14 page)

Freya crunched an ice cube.

“At the beginning I wasn’t sure he even noticed me—as a woman, I mean. But then I sort of bumped into him after class, and I felt this incredible
connection
. . .”

“Oh, dear. Not painful, I hope?”

“. . . even though he’s above me in so many ways, so much smarter and deeper and . . .”

“Older?”

Candace looked stern. “Age is about the number of years you’ve been on the planet, not how human beings interact emotionwise.”

“How true.”

There was the sound of a key in the lock. Both women’s eyes swiveled to the living-room door. They waited in silence, listening to Jack maneuver his bike into the hall. Candace moistened her lips and shook back her hair in preparation for his entrance.

The door opened and Jack ambled in, sliding his wire-rimmed glasses into place with a forefinger. For a split second Freya saw him through Candace’s eyes—hunky, masculine, appealingly disheveled, the sort of man you kidded yourself you could “save.” Then she almost laughed out loud as Jack caught sight of them both and halted abruptly, as astounded as if he’d found Hitler
and
Stalin in his living room.

“Well, well,
well!
” He was suddenly as jovial as Santa Claus. “My two favorite women. Together! How—how wonderful!”

“I know. Isn’t it marvelous?” Freya mimicked his rapturous tone.

Jack shot her a dirty look and rubbed his hands with hectic bonhomie. “So!” he enthused. “I guess you two girls have met!”

“We two girls certainly have.”

Candace could resist him no longer. With a tremulous cry, she launched herself from the couch and almost ran to throw her arms around Jack’s waist. Freya watched deadpan as Candace gazed up at him adoringly, a darling little daisy turning its face to the sun. If she had called out “Daddy!” Freya wouldn’t have been in the least surprised.

Jack mussed Candace’s hair with a casual hand and disengaged himself. “Okay, everyone!” he cried, his jollity control still on maximum. “I’ll just, uh, get my papers, and we’ll go!”

“W—we?” faltered Candace, staring at Freya in panic.

“No, no.” She waved a hand. “You young people run along and enjoy yourselves. I want to stay home and give my dentures a good soak.”

The two of them quickly made their escape. Freya could hear them going down the path—the slow rumble of Jack’s voice, Candace’s happy, answering giggle. The sounds died away; then there was silence, and the long evening ahead.

Freya topped up her drink, slotted a tape into the stereo, and flopped onto the couch. On the floor beside it was the inevitable teetering pile of Jack’s magazines, mostly copies of the
New York Review of Books
. She hoisted a handful onto her stomach and shuffled through them idly, while Billie Holiday poured her tender melancholy into the room.
“I don’t know why, but I’m feeling so sad . . .”
Names leaped out at Freya from the magazine covers—Updike, Roth, Isaiah Berlin, Nijinsky, William James, Velasquez. How could a man who reveled in the intellectual fireworks of these articles spend his leisure time with the Candaces of this world?

Freya suspected it was sheer laziness. There was something about Jack that made women drop into his hand like ripe fruit from a tree; he didn’t have to bother to pick them. She remembered when she had first seen him, fresh off the plane from North Carolina. It was August: eyes prickling with heat and grime; the maggoty smell of sunbaked garbage. Those were the days when she was mixing with a bohemian crowd and living uncomfortably close to the breadline. Jack had strolled onto the drab set of their existence, with his beautiful leather luggage and that old beat-up typewriter he was so proud of, looking like Robert Redford in
Barefoot in the Park
. He’d been so young, so eager. So
clean
. So polite! One of the girls in the rooming house swore he smelled of fresh grass. He said he was going to be a writer.

It hadn’t taken long to scuff him up. They’d all teased him like crazy—for his beautiful shirts, his rich Daddy, the easy rise and fall of his accent, his expensive hardback edition of Proust’s
Remembrance of Things Past
(unread). Jack took it all in good humor. His family was rich but he wasn’t, he said; he’d had a big bust-up with his father and for the time being, anyway, he was one of them. Freya took him under her wing. Jack was funny; he was generous with what he had; he wasn’t ashamed to be enthusiastic; and he was serious about his work. She liked him. And he liked her. But that was all. He was too young for her. And there was already a queue for him. It was tacitly agreed that they would be friends.

And they still were friends. Freya turned back to her magazines and flicked idly through the pages. She was glad she’d never gotten involved with Jack. He was good fun and good company, but his relationships with intelligent women—the few she could remember—never seemed to last long, probably because he couldn’t stand the competition. He used to talk about Fayette, the girl at the University of North Carolina who had been perfect in every way and had supposedly broken his heart, but Freya suspected that he used her as an excuse not to commit himself. It was easier to drift along with only a fraction of his brain engaged. Men liked intellectual challenges, and they liked attractive women: they just didn’t like the two in combination.

Or did they? Freya’s attention sharpened as she reached the back pages of the
Review
and discovered the “Personal” advertisements.

Yale grad DWF seeks attractive, cultured companion for excursions to theater, exhibitions, country and—who knows?—more private places.

Well, well.

Bogart (JNRD) in search of Bergman. Let’s play it again.

Freya sat up excitedly and looked around for a pen. This could be the answer to her problem.
“Lover man, oh where can you be?”
wailed Billie. Freya didn’t exactly need a lover man, but she did desperately need a man, and she needed him within the next two weeks. Anyone presentable would do. Readers of the
New York Review of Books
were bound to be a cut above the usual lonely hearts; these men would be respectable, educated, sophisticated . . .

Freya found the three most recent issues and started to compile a shortlist. The abbreviations were troubling. Could DWF really mean a dwarf? And what about MWM—marvelous, wonderful me? Murderer with mange? Magnificent white mouse? She tapped her pen thoughtfully against pursed lips.

First she eliminated those who didn’t give an e-mail address; there wasn’t enough time to contact box numbers, and telephoning seemed dangerously direct. Then she cut out anyone who admitted to being bearded, fit, over forty-five, married, or had used the words
intimate
,
fun
, or
threesome
. She was left with a meager choice, but all she needed was one lucky strike. A faint smile curved her mouth as she began to draft a reply in her head. This was fun, sort of like mail-order shopping.

Suddenly brisk, Freya gathered together her bundle of magazines, got up from the couch, and walked purposefully across the living room. Jack’s computer was in her room, the room that she
rented
. If she used it to send out one or two teensy messages, he could hardly object. Could he?

CHAPTER 10

The ship came into the harbor.

Hmm.

The ship entered the harbor.

Better, but—

Entering the harbor, the ship . . .

Jack drummed nervy fingertips across his computer keyboard and frowned at these clunking efforts.

The ship chugged?—glided?—sailed?—sped?—cruised?

No.
Think.
The ship he had in mind was a big old tub, forcing its way through rough waves. What about this?

The ship plowed into the harbor.

Oh yeah, brilliant. He’d made it sound as though the ship were demolishing the harbor. Jack put his finger on the DELETE key and pressed hard.

Now there was only the white cursor flashing at him, a frenzied lighthouse beam in the flat, empty blue of his screen. He shut his eyes, trying to dream himself into the moment.

The ship lumbered into harbor on a foggy February night, its rusty metal creaking with cold.

That was better. He had told the reader that it was a cold night, that the ship was old and big. He liked the alliteration of
foggy February
and
creaking with cold
. He read the sentence aloud to himself, to check how its rhythm struck the ear. Not bad. But there was nothing individual about his phrasing, no way of telling whether the writer was Jack Madison or Somerset Maugham or Irving P. Nobody. Would the sentence be more exciting backwards?

On a foggy February night the ship lumbered into harbor . . .

Or broken up, like bad poetry?

Foggy February. Cold creak of rusty metal.

. . . Rusting? rusted?

Jack scratched his nose. Did metal creak when it was cold? Was it a ship exactly, or a boat? He decided to look up “Shipping” in his encyclopedia. A description, or a picture, might inspire him. Half an hour later he was a great deal better informed about Saskatchewan (cold), Seventh Day Adventists (weird) and the Seleucid Dynasty (Syria
c
. 312–64 B.C.). He had also, after extensive nautical research, ascertained that the word
ship
meant “a vessel with a bowsprit and three, four, or five square rigging masts” or “any large seagoing vessel”; whereas a
boat
was “a small open oared or sailing vessel, fishing vessel, mail packet, or small steamer.” Ship it was, then. Okay: so the ship was in the harbor. What next? He checked his watch. Hey, time for coffee!

The kitchen was a mess. So much for having a woman around the place. While the coffee heated, Jack decided it really was time that someone cleaned up around here. He filled the sink with hot soapy water and dabbed one or two plates with a cloth before realizing that the best policy would be to let everything soak itself clean. Instead, he checked through the newspaper to see if there was anything important he’d missed. It was 105 degrees Fahrenheit in Riyadh, yet only 35 in Anchorage; New York, at 70 degrees, was exactly in between the two: amazing. He poured out his coffee and was about to carry it back to his desk when he remembered the loose hinge on one of the cabinets that he’d been meaning to fix for weeks. He sighed with exasperation: another delay. Still, no time like the present. Now, where had he put his screwdrivers?

Twenty minutes later he was back where he started this morning, staring at a blank screen—except he now had a pink bandage around one thumbnail. He picked at it absently, waiting for inspiration to strike. His head felt as if it were clogged with porridge. He lowered it into his hands and groaned. Why couldn’t he write like he used to? What had happened? Words used to gush out of him; once he had written a story in a single day. In his eagerness to get something—anything—published, he hadn’t stopped to agonize over every word, or to fret about his position in the literary pantheon. Yet he had scored a bull’s-eye with his very first shot. At the time he had accepted his success as simple, wonderful luck. Everything was new to him—proofs to correct (his words looked so wonderful in print that he missed all the typos); alternative jacket designs to consider (they were all fabulous); blurbs to write (pompous as hell, he later realized). And then the reviews, falling at his feet thick and beautiful as peach blossoms in springtime.

Jack opened the deep bottom drawer of his desk. Furtive as someone reaching for his porn stash, he pulled something out from the very back. It was his clippings file. Balancing the fat folder on his knees, he swung his chair away from the screen and began to leaf through the pages. As he read, a self-satisfied smile crept across his mouth. Here was a good one: “Madison springs his narrative traps with the ruthless expertise of a professional, while never losing his compassion for their victims” (
New York Times
). And another old favorite: “furiously intelligent . . . written with the kind of grace many older writers can only daydream about” (
Washington Post
). “Brilliant”—what about that? Okay, so it was only the Little Rock
Democrat-Gazette
, but not everyone from Arkansas was stupid. Apart from a certain H. Hirschberg, who complained that Jack had “not fully embraced postmodernism” (whatever that meant), and whose own first novel Jack prayed might one day fall into his hands for review, every commentator made the same point: He was good.

Was. Had been. Jack caught sight of the date of one of the reviews and snapped the folder shut. He had long ago passed his publisher’s deadline for delivery of his new novel. He must hurry up! Jack stared at his empty screen, his brain a jumble of fragmented thoughts. All he wanted was to combine the virtues of
Great Expectations
,
The Great Gatsby
,
Catcher in the Rye
, and
The Sound and the Fury
. The story was in his head, somewhere, a perfect artifact. But the words wouldn’t come.