Just Friends (5 page)

“Let’s call her a cab.”

“Fuck off, Gus. I don’t need a cab.”

Something weird was happening to the room. The walls were billowing in and out like sails. The floor was tilting.

Someone bent close beside her. “Are you all right, sweetheart?”

“Fuck off, Larry. I’m fine,” she mumbled, and passed out.

CHAPTER 3

The bed was hot and sweaty. Sunlight glared through thin curtains. Somewhere a fly was buzzing. Jack groaned through mummified lips. His mouth felt like a bat cave. He turned onto his stomach and buried his face in the pillow.

The buzz came again: not a fly, but the doorbell. Jack opened a gummy eye and squinted at the bedside clock. It was almost noon. He rolled over and levered his body into a sitting position. After a painful interval his brain followed. Hemingway had probably felt like this much of his life, Jack told himself, a cheering thought that enabled him to rise to his feet and pull on a pair of jeans over his undershorts. He added a cleanish white T-shirt, raked his fingernails through his hair, and stumbled down to the front door. In the hallway, something bit into his bare foot. Hopping and cursing, Jack dislodged a metal bottle top from the soft flesh and flicked it back onto the floor. He remembered that Hemingway had shot himself in the end.

On his doorstep a pretty young woman was smiling up at him. Automatically Jack smiled back. It took only seconds to recognize her as one of his students from the Creative Writing seminar he taught on Tuesday evenings, Candace Something-or-other. They had gone out for a drink after class last week. He’d been much struck by her listening skills.

“I hope it’s okay to drop by,” she began shyly. “You said the other night that if I was in the neighborhood . . . We were going to do some more work on my structure, remember?” She gestured at her chest, which was ample and deliciously rounded, and after a moment of confusion Jack saw that she was clasping a bundle of books and papers. “But if this is a bad time—?”

“No, no.” Jack found his voice. Dark hair fell to her shoulders in a glossy wave. Her skin was smooth and glowing. “It’s a perfect time.” He smiled down at her. “Just perfect. Come in.”

He stepped back to let her pass inside, inhaling a fresh smell of soap that took him right back to high school.

“Beautiful glass,” she said, admiring the etched panel in the door. “I love these old places. They’re so full of—”

“Shit!” Jack recoiled from a rancid blast of last night’s fumes as he opened the living-room door. The scene that met his eyes, bathed in a lurid, curtained half-light, reminded him of a Tarantino movie. “I forgot.” He rubbed a stubbly cheek. “Wait here a minute, will you?”

She stopped obediently in the doorway. Moving swiftly, Jack pulled open the curtains, then toured the room picking up bottles, glasses, ashtrays, squashed potato chip bags and other jetsam, which he piled higgledy-piggledy onto the center of the table. With an expertise born of practice he then flipped up the corners of the tablecloth, drew them tight to create a giant makeshift sack, and carried the whole clanking mess out to the kitchen. Returning, he opened a window, flipped over the seat cushions of the couch to dislodge any remaining debris, and patted one invitingly. “Sit down. I’ll make some coffee.”

Candace was leaning against the doorjamb, watching him in frank amusement, a tip of pink tongue curled against her upper lip.

“What’s so funny?” he asked.

Her smile broadened, revealing straight pearly teeth. “You are.”

Jack decided this would be a good moment to tuck his T-shirt into his jeans. “Party last night,” he growled cryptically.

“I guessed.” Candace swayed over to the couch, sat down and crossed her bare legs. She gave a dreamy sigh. “I love parties.”

“Not that kind of party. This was a boys’ night. Cards and booze and all that bad stuff. You’re much too young and innocent for that kind of thing.”

“I’m twenty-two!” Candace protested.

“Exactly.” Jack retreated to the kitchen, smiling to himself: young girls were so adorable. He tried to recall which story she was working on. Was it the monologue of the suicidal teenager, or the one about the wolf? He had to stop drinking so much.

While the coffee heated, he ducked into the bathroom, located some headache pills, and washed them down with a whole glass of water. Then he squeezed out a gob of toothpaste and squelched it around his mouth with his tongue. That was better. Body cleansed, his memory followed suit, and now he remembered how Candace had approached him as he was leaving the seminar room and asked him something about
The Sound and the Fury
. Well, that was it. William Faulkner was his hero: a Southerner, a genius, a whisky drinker. The fact that this fresh-faced young woman had ventured beyond the cordon sanitaire enclosing Sylvia Plath, Toni Morrison, and the usual crew of politically correct writers was stirring. He wanted to find out more about her. Three beers later, he was still holding forth about Faulkner, the South, literature, and himself, prompted by her flattering attentiveness and a need to dodge her more alarming questions about “modality” and “semiotics.” That was the trouble with these self-educated or semieducated students; sometimes they knew more lit. crit. jargon than he did. The next thing he knew it was midnight; somehow they never did get around to Candace herself, though he had a dim memory that she’d said she was secretary, originally from one of those dismal industrial towns like Pittsburgh or New London. He must have given her his address and some vague invitation as he left, though it was hard to remember now. He really must stop drinking.

When he returned with the coffee he found Candace examining his shelves.

“All these books!” Her tone was admiring. “I can hardly believe you’ve read them all.”

Jack could hardly believe it either. “Publishers send me things for endorsement. And I do some reviewing.” He shrugged modestly, slopping coffee.

“Here, let me do that.” Candace took charge of the tray, pouring coffee from the pot and milk from a carton in neat, efficient movements while Jack sprawled in an armchair.

“So this is the home of Jack Madison,” she said, settling herself back on the couch. “You can’t imagine how exciting it is for me to see how a real writer lives.”

Jack glanced vaguely around the familiar room. Piles of old magazines were stacked on the floor. A lamp shade hung off its metal frame, where someone had bumped into it last night. The smell of dope still hung in the air. “It’s kind of messy, I guess.”

“Creativity
is
messy. Writing is just so involving, I’m beginning to discover that. If my roommate talks to me I’m, like, leave me alone, I’m thinking.” She paused. “Do you find that?”

“Absolutely.” Jack felt a prickle of familiar panic. He did
not
have writer’s block; he was just letting his novel ripen in his imagination.

“But maybe you don’t have a roommate to bother you?” Candace cocked her head inquiringly.

“What? Oh, no. I hate sharing with other people.”

“Even . . . women?”

“Especially women. All those fights about the garbage, or who finished the milk. Who cares? I like to be able to do what I want when I want.”

Candace nodded. “Solitude is an essential prerequisite for the artist.”

“Yeah. Right.” She was very articulate for a twenty-two-year-old.

“So, tell me, Jack, what are you?”

Jack was nonplussed. “A writer, I guess.”

“No, what star sign?” Candace laughed at his foolishness. “Wait, let me guess.” Her brow furrowed as she considered the alternatives. “Let’s see. You’re creative, sensitive, intelligent . . .”

“Keep going.”

“. . . and a little egotistical. Hmm. Aquarius?” Her head tilted. “Am I right?”

“No idea. My birthday’s February first, if that’s any help.”

“I knew it!” Candace clapped her hands with excitement. Her brown eyes grew wide. “That’s so awesome. It must be the Sagittarius in me—you know, intuition and stuff. I’m on the cusp with Scorpio.”

Jack had no idea what she was talking about, but she looked so cute and perky that he smiled back.

“I have a favor to ask.” Candace took a pen out of her purse, then reached for something in her pile of papers. Jack’s heart sank. He didn’t want to spend his Saturday in textual analysis of someone else’s dreary prose.

She held a book out to him. “I know it’s corny, but would you—?”

Jack was gratified to recognize his own book, the collection of short stories that had launched his career on a tide of rave reviews. In hardback, too. “Aw, you shouldn’t have wasted your money.”

“I found it on sale, reduced to half price. Wasn’t that lucky?”

Jack frowned. This was not something authors liked to hear. He turned to the title page, took the pen Candace offered, and thought for a moment. Then he wrote “Candy is dandy,” and signed his name with a flourish. He closed the book and handed it back.

Candace stroked the dust jacket reverently. “If I saw my name on a real book I think I’d die.”

“You’d have an awfully short career.”

Candace laughed and hugged the book tight, so that her breasts plumped up above the stretchy top she was wearing. Jack wondered if that was what people called a
boob tube
. Or a
bustier
?—or a
basque
? Whatever it was, he’d like to shake its inventor by the hand.

“Listen,” he said casually, “are you doing anything tonight?”

“Me?” Candace’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “Not especially. Why?”

“I was thinking, you could leave me your script to read, and we could talk about it over dinner.”

“Just you and me?”

“Just you and me.”

“But it’s Saturday night.” Her lips curved flirtatiously. “You must have plans. Isn’t there somebody—?”

“Nobody,” Jack said firmly. “Not a thing. No plans, no ties, no—”

A sudden commotion erupted in the hallway. There was a yelp of pain, a vengeful thump, a muttered tirade. Then a whey-faced figure limped into the room, wearing nothing but a striped shirt Jack vaguely recognized. He stared. It was
his
shirt. And the woman inside was Freya. He’d forgotten all about her.

“ ‘Scuse me,” she croaked. “Oof!” She winced as the slanting sunlight hit her face and flung up a protective hand, then shuffled blindly across the room, depositing a metal bottle cap on the table as she passed. Jack watched, speechless, as she continued through to the passage beyond. There was the slam of the bathroom door, then the sound of somebody throwing up.

“I have to go now.” Candace was already on her feet. The sparkle had gone from her face.

“But you’ve just come!” Jack sprang out of his chair, blocking her way. He wanted to strangle Freya. “Look, you haven’t even finished your coffee. Sit down.”

Candace shook her head. “I need to do some shopping. And you’re busy.”

“No, I’m not. Oh, you mean
her
?” Jack sounded incredulous. “That’s just someone who came to play cards last night and got drunk. She’ll be okay.”

“You said it was a boys’ night.”

“I don’t think of Freya as a
girl
.” Jack chuckled at the very notion. “She an old friend. An old, old friend. I mean, really old.” He swallowed. “Practically forty!”

Candace’s eyes darted to his. She looked suitably shocked.

“Personally,” Jack lowered his voice, “I think it’s kind of sad when someone of that age gets out of control and has to be put to bed
in the guest room
, don’t you?”

Candace shrugged.

“Actually, my study. It’s so frustrating. I haven’t been able to do any work all morning. The sooner I can get her out of here and back uptown with her boyfriend, the better.”

“That’s up to you.” Candace tossed her hair. “I mean, it’s none of my business.”

“Good. So are we meeting tonight?”

“I don’t know. . . .”

“Come on,” Jack drawled persuasively. “How will I ever finish my novel if you don’t tell me all about semantics.”

“Semiotics.” Was that the suspicion of a smile?

“See, I can’t even pronounce it right. Why don’t you write down your phone number? When I’ve gotten rid of Freya I’ll give you a call.”

“I don’t know,” she repeated, twisting a lock of hair. “I might be busy after all.”