Three-Martini Lunch (10 page)

Just before we drew up to the counter, however, I glanced again at the loge box and saw Bobby looking down at me. He had spotted me in the crowd and was watching me with a curious, amused smile. There was no malice in it, but it bothered me all the same, and I felt a cold jolt of something. I froze mid-step. I tapped the young man on the shoulder.

“You know, on second thought, I don't know about that drink . . . I'd really better be going,” I said. I watched the young man's brow furrow in confusion. I looked at his intelligent hazel eyes and tasteful suit and immediately felt sorry, but there was nothing to be done for it. I managed to make things even worse by adding insult to injury. “I apologize if I've
been”—I paused—“less than clear.” He remained where he stood, the surprise and dismay written on his face, looking at me and saying nothing.

“Thank you again for your help,” I concluded, holding out a hand. It looked formal and awkward, hovering there in the air. He held me in his gaze for a moment longer, then shook my hand coldly—there was something tremendously empty and angry in it—and turned, abruptly disappearing back into the crowd.

I stood there feeling lousy, although I couldn't say exactly why. I looked up to where Bobby had been watching us but it appeared he was now engaged in a conversation with Andrew and John, who clapped him on the back and doubled over in laughter at something he said. I wondered if the joke wasn't about me. Annoyed, my impulse was to leave without saying good night, but no sooner had that thought flitted through my brain than I ruled it out. At this point, if Bobby didn't see me depart alone, he might make other assumptions about when and how I'd left.

I moved to climb the stairs back to the loge box to make my farewells.

13

A
guy could write all he wanted, but when it came to getting published it was always better to know somebody. I didn't really want to get chummy with fellas like Rusty Morrisdale but, considering who his boss was, it wouldn't hurt to be friendly. Literary agents were more rare in those days and only the really important writers were represented. If Rusty's boss represented me, I was sure to become a big deal. Once this idea occurred to me I spent hours picturing the famous literary agent magnanimously placing a hand on my shoulder and choosing me as the next great torchbearer of the written word. And sooner or later the famous agent was bound to go to lunch with My Old Man; My Old Man had lunch with everybody who was anybody, and Rusty's boss was definitely a somebody.

I spent a lot of time imagining the details of how that lunch would go. In my fantasies I pictured the famous literary agent eating a steak and smoking a cigarette and talking about the
absolute genius
of a young client of his in urgent, earnest tones across a white-linen tablecloth as my father
smiled and nodded and then eventually froze when the important literary agent said the young prodigy's name was Clifford Nelson and that he assumed it was no relation, of course. In some variations of this fantasy My Old Man would simply freeze upon hearing his son's name and in others he would choke a bit on his martini mid-swallow and dribble gin on his expensive silk tie but either way it was very good to fantasize about and it was a satisfying way to pass the afternoon, especially after spending all morning staring into a blank notebook and drinking coffee until the clock struck noon and the time finally came to tip some whiskey into the coffee mug and
Irish it up
, as Swish often phrased it in that wry winking way of his.

Of course, the problem with getting discovered by Rusty's boss was that it meant first getting discovered by Rusty. I'd have to find him, and I'd have to be friendly about it. I decided my best bet was to go around the Village looking for Bobby because after all Rusty had taken a strong interest in Bobby. If I hung around Bobby long enough, Rusty just might turn up again.

That afternoon I didn't find Bobby or Rusty but I
did
find Swish at the White Horse. He was drinking a beer with a pale-faced kid I had never seen before. The kid's face caught the cold late-afternoon light coming in from the window and gave off a milky bluish glow. It was always dim and slightly moist inside the White Horse and the wooden floor creaked when you walked on it but nevertheless there was something homey about all this and it was a favorite spot for hipsters to convene and argue about politics and philosophy and poetry. I guessed that was what Swish and this pale kid were doing now and I got a beer for myself and joined them. They were sitting at a booth and as soon as I approached, Swish looked up and smiled and scooted in to make room for me.

“Hey, Cliff, old buddy old pal. Sit on down and meet Gene,” Swish said, nodding to the pale-faced kid. “Gene here went and bought an ancient printing press for a song from some crazy old ex-Bolshevik and is gonna
start up his own literary magazine. Rented out a basement on Bleecker for the operation and everything.”

Gene smiled sheepishly and shrugged. “Swish and I have been coming up with names. I've decided to call it
The Tuning Fork
.”

I asked him a few questions about the whole business and he began to explain more about his plans for the print run. I was impressed by his ambition but also by his modesty and shyness. He had an unassuming way about him. It wasn't just that he was pale, either; there was a curious lack of color, like an albino but not quite, from his mousey hair to his washed-out hazel eyes that peered at you through a pair of delicate-looking wire-rimmed glasses.

“We need top-quality submissions for our first issue,” Gene said.

“I told him you're a writer,” Swish added. Now it was my turn to smile sheepishly and shrug.

“Would you care to submit something?” Gene asked. “A story or maybe an essay? No pressure, of course. It's just that Swish here tells me you're a swell writer with real ambitions, and we'd be happy to have something from you.”

“Well,” I said, turning the proposition over in my mind. “All right.” It would be fun to be part of a new literary magazine starting up and Gene seemed like just the kind of person who might actually succeed with a magazine. You had to have energy to start something like that, but you had to have a steady quality about you, too. Most kids in the Village who tried to start magazines had the energy but not the steadiness and this was why you saw so many new magazines come and go after only a handful of issues. They were flashy, rebellious-looking magazines and their covers were bursting with vibrancy and jazz and had a kind of manic quality about them you knew could not be sustained.

Looking at Gene, I figured that his literary magazine would be quieter and more understated but would still have plenty of youth and energy in it. I only had two stories on hand at the moment. One was something I
had written a few years back about a boy leaving a girl and acting like it didn't matter when really it was tearing him up inside. It was a little like that Hemingway story “The End of Something,” but instead of going on a fishing trip together the couple is at a baseball game and after the boy breaks things off with her the girl leaves for good during the seventh-inning stretch while the boy lets her go and stays and sits there like a stoic watching the end of the game even though he's all torn up inside. I had originally written the story back in prep school but I had worked on it over the years and made it better and better, but so far it had failed to gain traction with any of the literary rags I'd submitted it to. Perhaps Gene would see it for what it was and notice the great potential those editors had failed to spot.

The other story was about two young guys who ride the rails as hobos and the big con they pull on this little town in the Midwest. They get everyone to buy tickets for a fake lottery. The two guys are real sneaky about it, too, because they never overtly discuss their plan in public but instead they leave hobo writing in discreet places around the town buildings and it ends with them back on the train, drinking whiskey and laughing about how they managed to pull the wool over everybody's eyes. During their time in the town one of the guys balls a farmer's young, pretty daughter but later as he sits drinking whiskey with his friend and laughing he realizes he can never go back to the town again because of the con they've put over on everyone. He likes the girl and the realization he can never see her again makes him profoundly sad but he carries on and never admits this sadness to his friend. The truth was I'd gotten the bare bones of the story from Swish. It was one of the stories he liked to tell from his old hobo days because it had a kind of punch line to it and everyone who heard it always laughed. Of course I'd changed the names and altered some of the details, but Swish never really asked me about my work anyway and so I thought it was no big deal if I didn't tell him his story had been the original inspiration, just in case it made things funny between us.
It was true that the seedling of my idea had come from his anecdote, but a seedling is just a seedling and what mattered more was what a writer did with it after it was planted and I wasn't sure Swish would understand this. In any case, I decided to give Gene the first one.

“Sure,” I said. “I think I have something.” Gene and I made arrangements to meet up the next day and he gave me the address of the basement workshop on Bleecker and I promised to bring over a freshly typed copy for him to read.

Suddenly the memory of sitting in the café that day with Miles flashed into my head and I wondered if Swish hadn't recommended that Gene ought to ask Miles to contribute a story, too. It didn't appear Swish had thought of it and I considered whether I ought to bring it up. But then Miles seemed awfully private with his stuff and it wasn't my job to go around advocating for him anyway. If a fella wanted to get people to read and acknowledge his work, then that was on
his
shoulders. I decided to keep quiet about Miles and anyway I was glad to have happened upon Swish and Gene and was feeling optimistic that Gene would like my story.

“Cheers to both of you,” said Swish, raising his glass. It was plain he was happy to have fostered this connection and we were all excited to think Gene's new literary magazine might actually amount to something.

•   •   •

T
he prospect of having my writing appear in print had put me in a fine mood. It was still early in the day, and I was feeling a little happy-go-lucky, and maybe also a little foolish. I say foolish because in my stoned state I decided to go up to midtown and visit my father's office at old Bonwright. I was burning to tell him that my story was going to be published in a literary magazine and I figured I could casually drop it into conversation.

Professionally speaking, it was best to get to My Old Man in the afternoon if you wanted his good favor. Even though I had only observed things from a distance, I did know
something
about how editors worked
and generally the rule was that there were editors who it was better to approach in the morning and editors who it was better to approach in the afternoon. And even if I didn't know about editors, I knew about My Old Man and I knew he was definitely the type to approach in the afternoon, after he'd had a nice steak and a few martinis in him and was feeling jolly and affable.

It was a quick jaunt up to midtown and to the high-rise where My Old Man worked. I got off the elevator on the seventh floor and looked for my father's secretary in her usual spot amid the hustle and bustle of the typing pool but there was nobody there. This was odd, because in all the time My Old Man had worked at Bonwright he'd always had the same girl, Francine, and Francine guarded his office in that funny watchdog way that only older broads who've worked for the same boss all their lives have about them. She was tough and kept a careful eye on his door and I knew My Old Man liked it that way.

His door was open a crack and I pushed it the rest of the way open. There was an air of real chaos inside. My Old Man was pacing in front of the window while arguing with someone on the telephone and intermittently smoking a cigarette and gulping down a glass of scotch. His desk was buried under a rippled mountain of heaped-up papers and the mountain was crumbling one binder-clipped manuscript at a time.

“No,” he was saying into the telephone. “No, no, no. I've already had two temps in here; I'm telling you now, I need another. I was told the girl from the temp agency—what's the name of the one they were going to send? Barbara?—I was told
Barbara
would be here already . . . What? . . . When? That is unacceptable! I don't care if she's on another job; send someone else in that case. What? . . . I don't know what was requested . . . Well, whoever you send, I'll tell you this much: She'll be here come Monday or I'll inform our personnel department that Bonwright is no longer doing business with your agency.”

I stooped to pick up some of the papers that had fallen and put them
back on the desk and when I did My Old Man turned around and noticed me. I was only trying to help but nonetheless he frowned with irritation and waved a hand as if to shoo me away. My stomach sank. It was plain that I had miscalculated and instead of picking a very good time to share my news with him I had wound up picking a very bad time and it was not likely that it would go very well for me. Finally he hung up the phone and sighed and drained the last of his scotch.

“Yes? How much do you need, Clifford?” he said once he'd swallowed the scotch and slammed down the glass. He stubbed out his cigarette with an angry jab. “Make it quick. I haven't got time to fuss over your financial problems today.” My father was famously friendly and charming to everyone except me.

“I haven't come for money.”

“Well, now, there's something new.”

“Where's Francine?” I asked, not ready to launch into the real reason for my visit.

“
Mrs. Edmund Roper
quit last week,” he said, lighting another cigarette. He pretended to look at his watch with a mocking expression. “I expect she's on her honeymoon right about now. She got married, if you can believe it.”

“At her age?” I said. I was blown over by this news, because Francine was a steely old battle-axe of a woman and I couldn't for the life of me picture her married, much less on her honeymoon.

“It turns out she found herself a nice old widower,” he said with a bitter expression, “and left me here to rot.” He made a gesture towards the disarray on his desk and crossed over to the bar-cart in the far corner. “I suppose it's my fault,” he said, pouring himself another scotch. He poured a few fingers into a second glass and I assumed this one would be for me so I went ahead and sat down in a chair. “Back when I could've had any girl at all, I chose
that
tough old bird to be my secretary, thinking, ‘Well, here's
one I won't have to pretend to romance,' only to have her romanced out from under my nose! Hasn't anyone any loyalty anymore?”

“Well, she
was
with you for around fifteen years, wasn't she?”

“That isn't the point, Clifford.” He put the second glass down in front of me and sighed.

We sat and drank the scotch and then drank two more and I listened to My Old Man let off steam about his responsibilities at the office and about coping without Francine. As his face turned pink and I felt my cheeks begin to glow with the warmth of the scotch, I changed the subject to baseball and which Yankees were rumored to be doing well at spring training. After a while he loosened his tie and sat further back into his chair and together we chatted away. When he seemed relaxed I thought again of bringing up my lucky news, as it was sure to impress him.